


canyon moon

by stefonzolesky



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:13:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefonzolesky/pseuds/stefonzolesky
Summary: Ann considers leaving Orange County a lot.





	canyon moon

Ann doesn’t love Halloween. She doesn’t love the idea of being scared (in good fun, she reminds herself, but she still doesn’t like it.) 

Ever since she was a kid, she always preferred staying home and handing out candy. Adults seemed surprised by a seven year old girl trying to balance a big orange bowl in one hand so she could give out fruity sweets, but it was the best part of the night for her. Not the decorating, not the costumes. Just giving out candy.

This proves to stay true as she jumps into being a single mother, living without her parents. She  _ does _ enjoy dressing up more than she did as a kid, and maybe it’s the matching costumes with her son that do the trick.

Ann considers leaving Orange County a lot. There are a lot of reminders of things she’d rather not be reminded of, and it’s not like anyone would miss her anyway. She’s been hurt too many times to stay, but for some reason, she always talks herself out of leaving. She says it’s for her parents, or it’s for her son, or it’s for any other reason.

Maybe she doesn’t want to leave.  
  


As her son is turning six years old, she realizes she should probably get a more stable job. She works part time -- for as much as she can pay Jaqueline to watch her son -- but it’s growing to be not-quite-enough and her parents won’t be able to support her forever. 

She gets a job at a movie theater on top of her part time at a gas station near her house. She spends her days working, and it fucking sucks, but she has to pay Jacqueline somehow, at least, until she finds someone worth dating.

Actually, it’s Steve Holt that she first takes an interest in. He’s changed, since high school, and he’s on a date when Ann sees him for the first time in years -- some skinny blonde girl just a little shorter than him -- but she’s happy to see him nonetheless.

He’s halfway through paying for his candy, when he meets Ann’s eyes and says, “Hey, I know you!”

Ann blinks, disbelief clouding her vision. “You do?”

“Yeah!” Steve laughs. “Ann Veal, right? You helped me with my campaign in high school.”

“Yeah,” Ann confirms. She slides over his box of Bunch-a-Crunch. “Steve Holt! Didn’t you lose, though?”

“I dropped out,” Steve clarifies. “I wanted to go find my dad.” He shakes his head. “But, that’s enough about me. How have you been?”

“I really don’t think you have enough time to get into that right now,” Ann says with a sheepish laugh. “You’re holding up the line.”

“Right.” Steve frowns. “Yeah, Amanda and I should probably get to that movie…”

As Steve starts to walk away, Ann finds herself involuntarily shouting out, “Wait!”

Steve spins on his heel. Ann realizes then and there that she doesn’t exactly know what she wanted to say, so she quietly digs through her (thankfully nearby) purse to find one of the business cards that her dad made for her, even though she told him a million times that she would never need them. She hands it over to Steve with a shy smile and says, “Give me a call sometime, so we can, y’know… Properly catch up.”

Steve grins, and it catches Ann off guard because that’s the last thing she expected him to do.

“Okay,” He says,  _ excited, _ or something -- an emotion that Ann has never seen in another person’s face, at least, not in response to her. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

 

When Ann goes home that day, she finds herself glancing at her phone constantly. She wouldn’t be surprised if Steve had forgotten their encounter altogether, so she’s more than relieved when her phone starts to ring. 

“Hello,” She answers faster than she ever has before, “this is Ann Veal.”

“Steve Holt,” comes through on the other line, and she can  _ hear _ his smile. Of course, he was at the theater on a date, so she shouldn’t get her hopes up, and  _ fuck, _ she can  _ not _ already be thinking about this. “I would have called sooner, but something came up with Amanda.”

“How long have you two been together?” Ann asks, and she doesn’t know why she likes to torture herself like this.

“We’ve been on, like, two dates,” Steve admits. A laugh rings through the receiver, and damn it, why does Ann let herself fall for people so easily? It has  _ never _ \-- not even once -- ended well for her. “I don’t think it’s gonna last. She’s really, uh, artificial.”

“I thought guys  _ loved _ artificial,” Ann hears herself saying, and then promptly rolls her eyes.

She can almost see Steve frowning on the other end. “No,” He says simply. “Not really. Plus, all Amanda wants to do is go shopping, and she makes me pay for her to get new clothes, and I’m not having any fun. Y’know? I want to have fun in a relationship.”

“Yeah,” Ann says quietly. She knows better than most people -- the last two relationships she’s been in haven’t been any fun for her. She’s been forgotten and ignored, she’s been dragged along with no regards for her feelings, and it’s all kind of sucked. She should be turned off of relationships forever. But, somehow, she’s not.

She zones back into the conversation.

“So, you’re gonna end things with her?” She asks, trying to keep Steve engaged in the conversation, just so she can talk to him for as long as possible, then her son wakes up, and she says, “Shit, Steve, I have to go.”

“Really?” Steve sounds almost disappointed, which is not the reaction she expected. “Here, I’ll text you. We can get coffee sometime.”

“That sounds great,” Ann promises. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The line goes dead. Ann finds herself excited, like,  _ really _ excited. It’s a good feeling. She thinks she likes being excited, she thinks she likes the way her life is heading, and she thinks she likes sticking around in Orange County.

**Author's Note:**

> hey it's your resident ann veal stan here to say that She Deserves To Be Happy


End file.
